The bank has now set aside £1.3 billion, up from £1 billion, to deal with PPI compensation after a recent increase in the number of claims, which have eaten into quarterly profits of its UK arm, it announced today.

Barclays pledged last year to pay all claims that were put on hold — pending a result of an unsuccessful case brought by banks to prevent payouts — on or before 20 April 2011.

Stripping out the cost of PPI and other one-off costs, the bank reported a 22% rise in pre-tax profits to £2.4 billion, against City expectations of £2 billion.

The news about Barclays's PPI provision comes as MoneySavingExpert.com and lobby group Which? launch a campaign to encourage consumers to reclaim for free.

A summit, hosted by the pair, and attended by banks and regulators on Monday, was intended to stop consumers wasting thousands of pounds by using a claims management firm (see our PPI Reclaiming guide).

As these companies typically take 30% of any claim, you'd be throwing away £825 on a typical £2,750 payout.

An agreement was reached to help victims get all their money back by making reclaiming for free easier.

Billions back

Compensation paid to victims of payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling by all banks is likely to have passed the £3 billion mark since the start of last year.

The Financial Services Authority says £403 million was paid out in January, the latest figures available. A record £441 million was paid in December.

This takes the total to £2.5 billion since the start of 2011 but does not include the past three months. Assuming the pattern of roughly £400 million a month was paid in February, March and April, the total will have comfortably breached £3 billion.

But there is still a long way to go — it is estimated the total bill for all victims' redress could hit £9 billion.

How this site works

We think it's important you understand the strengths and limitations of the site. We're a journalistic website and aim to provide the best MoneySaving guides, tips, tools and techniques, but can't guarantee to be perfect, so do note you use the information at your own risk and we can't accept liability if things go wrong.

This info does not constitute financial advice, always do your own research on top to ensure it's right for your specific circumstances and remember we focus on rates not service.

We don't AS a general policy investigate the solvency of companies mentioned (how likely they are to go bust), but there is a risk any company can struggle and it's rarely made public until it's too late (see the section 75 guide for protection tips).

We often link to other websites, but we can't be responsible for their content.

Always remember anyone can post on the MSE forums, so it can be very different from our opinion.

MoneySavingExpert.com is part of the MoneySupermarket Group, but is entirely editorially independent. Its stance of putting consumers first is protected and enshrined in the legally-binding MSE Editorial Code.